Texas Challenges DOJ on Voter ID Law

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas (CN) – The Speaker of the Texas House and 27 other legislators asked a federal judge to quash subpoenas issued by the United States in Veasey v. Perry, a challenge to Texas’s voter ID law. Speaker Joe Straus says in his motion to quash: “The subpoena demands that third-party legislators and staff search and produce documents from their offices at the Capitol, plus emails from their official and personal accounts. The subpoena must be quashed because these documents are protected by the legislative privilege.” The Department of Justice in May sought to compel production of documents in the possession of the Office of the Attorney General. “These documents came into OAG’s possession because they were collected during Texas v. Holder, … a 2012 lawsuit concerning preclearance of Texas’s voter ID law, which Texas ultimately won. Once the voter-ID law took effect, DOJ and private parties brought this separate challenge to the law.” The “private parties” include the Texas State Conference of NAACP Branches, the Mexican-American Legislative Caucus of the Texas House of Representatives, the Texas League of Young Voters Education Fund and the Texas Association of Hispanic County Judges and County Commissioners. The Speaker’s motion is one of 28 “substantively” identical motions to quash, filed along with two other similar ones.